Corpus Hermeticum and Book of Mormon: Deep Thought

Ye Powers that are within me, hymn the One and All; sing with my Will, Powers all that are within me! O blessed Gnosis, by thee illumined, hymning through thee the Light that mind alone can see, I joy in Joy of Mind. Sing with me praises all ye Powers! Sing praise, my Self-control; sing thou through me, my Righteousness, the praises of the Righteous; sing thou, my Sharing-all, the praises of the All; through me sing, Truth, Truth's praises! Sing thou, O Good, the Good! O Life and Light, from us to you our praises flow! Father, I give Thee thanks, to Thee Thou Energy of all my Powers; I give Thee thanks, O God, Thou Power of all my Energies!

Tat. What then is true, Thrice-greatest One? Her. That which is never troubled, son, which cannot be defined; that which no colour hath, nor any figure, which is not turned, which hath no garment, which giveth light; that which is comprehensible unto itself [alone], which doth not suffer change; that which no body can contain. Tat. In very truth I lose my reason, father. Just when I thought to be made wise by thee, I find the senses of this mind of mine blocked up. Her. Thus is it, son: That which is upward borne like fire, yet is borne down like earth, that which is moist like water, yet blows like air, how shalt thou this perceive with sense--the that which is not solid nor yet moist, which naught can bind or loose, of which in power and energy alone can man have any notion,--and even then it wants a man who can perceive the Way of Birth in God?

Thy Reason (Logos) sings through me Thy praises. Take back through me the All into [Thy] Reason--[my] reasonable oblation! Thus cry the Powers in me. They sing Thy praise, Thou All; they do Thy Will. From Thee Thy Will; to Thee the All. Receive from all their reasonable oblation. The All that is in us, O Life, preserve; O Light illumine it; O God in-spirit it. It is Thy Mind that plays the Shepherd to Thy Word, O Thou Creator, Bestower of the Spirit [upon all].

Then saith to me Man-Shepherd: Didst understand this Vision what it means? Nay; that shall I know, I said. That Light, He said, am I, thy God, Mind, prior to Moist Nature which appeared from Darkness; the Light-Word (Logos) [that appeared] from Mind is Son of God. What then?--say I. Know that what sees in thee and hears is the Lord's Word (Logos); but Mind is Father-God. Not separate are they the one from other; just in their union [rather] is it Life consists. Thanks be to Thee, I said. So, understand the Light [He answered], and make friends with it.

Right was thy thought, O thou! But how doth "he who knows himself, go unto Him," as God's Word (Logos) hath declared? And I reply: the Father of the universals doth consist of Light and Life, and from Him Man was born. Thou sayest well, [thus] speaking. Light and Life is Father-God, and from Him Man was born. If then thou learnest that thou art thyself of Life and Light, and that thou [only] happen'st to be out of them, thou shalt return again to Life. Thus did Man-Shepherd speak. But tell me further, Mind of me, I cried, how shall I come to Life again.... for God doth say: "The man who hath Mind in him, let him learn to know that he himself [is deathless]."

In such wise then, as I have said, the generation of these seven came to pass. Earth was as woman, her Water filled with longing; ripeness she took from Fire, spirit from Aether. Nature thus brought forth frames to suit the form of Man. And Man from Life and Light changed into soul and mind,--from Life to soul, from Light to mind. And thus continued all the sense-world's parts until the period of their end and new beginnings.

Asc. What say'st thou ever, then, God is? Her. God, therefore, is not Mind, but Cause that the Mind is; God is not Spirit, but Cause that Spirit is; God is not Light, but Cause that the Light is. Hence should one honour God with these two names [the Good and Father]--names which pertain to Him alone and no one else. For no one of the other so-called gods, no one of men, or daimones, can be in any measure Good, but God alone; and He is Good alone and nothing else. The rest of things are separable all from the Good's nature; for [all the rest] are soul and body, which have no space that can contain the Good.

Hermes. The Mind, O Tat, is of God's very essence--(if such a thing as essence of God there be)--and what that is, it and it only knows precisely. The Mind, then, is not separated off from God's essentiality, but is united unto it, as light to sun. This Mind in men is God, and for this cause some of mankind are gods, and their humanity is nigh unto divinity. For the Good Daimon said: "Gods are immortal men, and men are mortal gods."

O'er whatsoever souls the Mind doth, then, preside, to these it showeth its own light, by acting counter to their prepossessions, just as a good physician doth upon the body prepossessed by sickness, pain inflict, burning or lancing it for sake of health. In just the selfsame way the Mind inflicteth pain upon the soul, to rescue it from pleasure, whence comes its every ill. The great ill of the soul is godlessness; then followeth fancy for all evil things and nothing good. So, then, Mind counteracting it doth work good on the soul, as the physician health upon the body.

[For] Thou art God; Thy Man thus cries to Thee through Fire, through Air, through Earth, through Water, [and] through Spirit, through Thy creatures. 'Tis from Thy Aeon I have found Praise-giving; and in Thy Will, the object of my search, have I found rest. Tat. By thy good pleasure have I seen this Praise-giving being sung, O father; I have set it in my Cosmos too. Her. Say in the Cosmos that thy mind alone can see, my son. Tat. Yea, father, in the Cosmos that the mind alone can see; for I have been made able by thy Hymn, and by thy Praise-giving my mind hath been illumined. But further I myself as well would from my natural mind send praise-giving to God.

Tat. Father, I see the All, I see myself in Mind. Her. This is, my son, Rebirth--no more to look on things from body's view-point (a thing three ways in space extended),... though this Sermon (Logos) on Rebirth, on which I did not comment;--in order that we may not be calumniators of the All unto the multitude, to whom indeed the God Himself doth will we should not.

And God-the-Mind, being male and female both, as Light and Life subsisting, brought forth another Mind to give things form, who, God as he was of Fire and Spirit, formed Seven Rulers who enclose the cosmos that the sense perceives. Men call their ruling Fate.

Asc. Thy argument (logos), Thrice-greatest one, is not to be gainsaid; air is a body. Further, it is this body which doth pervade all things, and so, pervading, fill them. What are we, then, to call that space in which the all doth move? Her. The Bodiless, Asclepius. Asc. What, then, is Bodiless? Her. 'Tis Mind and Reason (Logos), whole out of whole, all self-embracing, free from all body, from all error free, unsensible to body and untouchable, self stayed in self, containing all, preserving those that are, whose rays, to use a likeness, are Good, Truth, Light beyond light, the Archetype of soul. Asc. What, then, is God?

For it is mind that doth conceive all thoughts good thoughts--when it receives the seeds from God, their contraries when [it receiveth them] from one of the daimonials; no part of Cosmos being free of daimon, who stealthily doth creep into the daimon who's illumined by God's Light, and sow in him the seed of its own energy. And mind conceives the seed thus sown, adultery, murder, parricide, [and] sacrilege, impiety, [and] strangling, casting down precipices, and all such other deeds as are the work of evil daimones.

When mind becomes a daimon, the law requires that it should take a fiery body to execute the services of God; and entering in the soul most impious it scourgeth it with whips made of its sins. And then the impious soul, scourged with its sins, is plunged in murders, outrage, blasphemy, in violence of all kinds, and all the other things whereby mankind is wronged. But on the pious soul the mind doth mount and guide it to the Gnosis' Light. And such a soul doth never tire in songs of praise [to God] and pouring blessing on all men, and doing good in word and deed to all, in imitation of its Sire.

Behold, again, the seven subject Worlds; ordered by Aeon's order, and with their varied course full-filling Aeon! [See how] all things [are] full of light, and nowhere [is there] fire; for 'tis the love and blending of the contraries and the dissimilars that doth give birth to light down shining by the energy of God, the Father of all good, the Leader of all order, and Ruler of the seven world-orderings! [Behold] the Moon, forerunner of them all, the instrument of nature, and the transmuter of its lower matter! [Look at] the Earth set in the midst of All, foundation of the Cosmos Beautiful, feeder and nurse of things on Earth! And contemplate the multitude of deathless lives, how great it is, and that of lives subject to death; and midway, between both, immortal [lives] and mortal, [see thou] the circling Moon.

Tat. Thou sayest things impossible, O father, things that are forced. Hence answers would I have direct unto these things. Am I a son strange to my father's race? Keep it not, father, back from me. I am a true-born son; explain to me the manner of Rebirth. Her. What may I say, my son? I can but tell thee this. Whene'er I see within myself the Simple Vision brought to birth out of God's mercy, I have passed through myself into a Body that can never die. And now I am not what I was before; but I am born in Mind. The way to do this is not taught, and it cannot be seen by the compounded element by means of which thou seest. Yea, I have had my former composed form dismembered for me. I am no longer touched, yet have I touch; I have dimension too; and [yet] am I a stranger to them now. Thou seest me with eyes, my son; but what I am thou dost not understand [even] with fullest strain of body and of sight.

Tat. Into fierce frenzy and mind-fury hast thou plunged me, father, for now no longer do I see myself. Her. I would, my son, that thou hadst e'en passed right through thyself, as they who dream in sleep yet sleepless. Tat. Tell me this too! Who is the author of Rebirth? Her. The Son of God, the One Man, by God's Will.

Thou knowest [now], my son, the manner of Rebirth. And when the Ten is come, my son, that driveth out the Twelve, the Birth in understanding is complete, and by this Birth we are made into Gods. Who then doth by His mercy gain this Birth in God, abandoning the body's senses, knows himself [to be of Light and Life ] and that he doth consist of these, and [thus] is filled with Bliss.

Her. But not unheedfully, my son. Tat. Ay. What I behold in mind, that do I say. To thee, thou Parent of my Bringing into Birth, as unto God I, Tat, send reasonable offerings. O God and Father, thou art the Lord, thou art the Mind. Receive from me oblations reasonable as thou would'st wish; for by thy Will all things have been perfected. Her. Send thou oblation, son, acceptable to God, the Sire of all; but add, my son, too, "through the Word" (Logos). Tat. I give thee, father, thanks for showing me to sing such hymns.

Her. Happy am I, my son, that thou hast brought the good fruits forth of Truth, products that cannot die. And now that thou hast learnt this lesson from me, make promise to keep silence on thy virtue, and to no soul, my son, make known the handing on to thee the manner of Rebirth, that we may not be thought to be calumniators. And now we both of us have given heed sufficiently, both I the speaker and the hearer thou. In Mind hast thou become a Knower of thyself and of our [common] Sire.

And speaking thus He gazed for long into my eyes, so that I trembled at the look of Him. But when He raised His head, I see in Mind the Light, [but] now in Powers no man could number, and Cosmos grown beyond all bounds, and that the Fire was compassed round about by a most mighty Power, and [now] subdued had come unto a stand. And when I saw these things I understood by reason of Man-Shepherd's Word (Logos).

But All-Father Mind, being Life and Light, did bring forth Man co-equal to Himself, with whom He fell in love, as being His own child; for he was beautiful beyond compare, the Image of his Sire. In very truth, God fell in love with His own Form; and on him did bestow all of His own formations.

THE Glory of all things is God, Godhead and Godly Nature. Source of the things that are is God, who is both Mind and Nature,--yea Matter, the Wisdom that reveals all things. Source [too] is Godhead,--yea Nature, Energy, Necessity, and End, and Making-new-again. Darkness that knew no bounds was in Abyss, and Water [too] and subtle Breath intelligent; these were by Power of God in Chaos. Then Holy Light arose; and there collected 'neath Dry Space from out Moist Essence Elements; and all the Gods do separate things out from fecund Nature.

Now, this was what Ammon desired, for he knew that king Lamoni was under the power of God; he knew that the dark veil of unbelief was being cast away from his mind, and the light which did light up his mind, which was the light of the glory of God, which was a marvelous light of his goodness—yea, this light had infused such joy into his soul, the cloud of darkness having been dispelled, and that the light of everlasting life was lit up in his soul, yea, he knew that this had overcome his natural frame, and he was carried away in God—

Wherefore I've ever heard, my son, Good Daimon also say--(and had He set it down in written words, He would have greatly helped the race of men; for He alone, my son, doth truly, as the First-born God, gazing upon all things, give voice to words (logoi) divine)--yea, once I heard Him say: "All things are one, and most of all the bodies which the mind alone perceives. Our life is owing to [God's] Energy and Power and Aeon. His Mind is Good, so is His Soul as well. And this being so, intelligible things know naught of separation. So, then, Mind, being Ruler of all things, and being Soul of God, can do whate'er it wills."

This is the dispensation of the universe, depending from the nature of the One, pervading [all things] through the Mind, than which is naught diviner or of greater energy; and naught a greater means for the at-oning men to gods and gods to men. He, [Mind,] is the Good Daimon. Blessed the soul that is most filled with Him, and wretched is the soul that's empty of the Mind. Tat. Father, what dost thou mean, again? Her. Dost think then, son, that every soul hath the Good [Mind]? For 'tis of Him we speak, not of the mind in service of which we just were speaking, the mind sent down for [the soul's] chastisement.